Crinkle Conundrum

My Betty Crocker cookbook touts the following recipe as being low-fat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chocolate Crinkles

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled

4 eggs

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup icing sugar

Directions:

Mix all ingredients (except icing sugar) in large bowl. Cover and refrigerate 3-4 hours.

Heat oven to 350. Lightly grease baking sheets.

Roll 1 inch balls of dough in icing sugar and place 2 inches apart on baking  sheet.

Bake 10 minutes, immediately remove from baking sheet to cool on wire rack.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've made them a couple of times, and they are very delicious. But then this week, with my "Cookie Countdown to Christmas" newsletter I got a recipe for chocolate crinkles... The picture looked exactly like these amazing cookies my friend Shannon used to make. I didn't know that was what a chocolate crinkle was supposed to look like!

Here is Jacob offering me a bite of his chocolate crinkle in September of 2009.
Note how the cookie is flat and light brown. 

Here is the picture that was e-mailed to me.
These look like Shannon's amazing cookies. I don't know what she calls them.

So I compared the recipe to Betty Crocker - IDENTICAL except that instead of 4 ounces of chocolate melted and cooled it uses 1 cup baking cocoa. I thought "hey, that actually makes these cookies easier" and decided to make up a batch last night for a christmas party tonight. I made the dough while the boys were napping (Yes, they were both napping, it was amazing), so that I could make them once the boys were in bed.  I used baking cocoa, refrigerated for four hours, did not grease my baking pans, and baked for 10 minutes. I got about 40 cookies, and they are so chocolatey, moist, and yummy.

Want one?

So my question is... why did they turn out so weird the previous times I made them?

For The Birds

So I thought I would try and get ahead today. Our next couple of weeks are starting to look busy... we are hosting several dinners, I want to do some Christmas baking, and various other little things... Like today Jeff is teaching confirmation and I like to send something along for the kids to eat. So I baked up a double batch of Low-Fat Brownies. My Aunt mentioned that there was a lot of sugar in this recipe so I cut out 1/2 cup of sugar. I also used the egg yolks because I didn't have quite enough applesauce, and thought I still needed some liquid ingredients. They turned out quite yummy. Then I decided to make bread. I need communion bread for tomorrow and sunday, and I wanted to serve home-made rolls (something new I've tried only once before) on saturday. Well, the first time I made these dinner rolls they didn't quite rise the way I wanted them too, but they still tasted really good. Today they rose beautifully! I thought these are going to be so perfect! I preheated the oven to 350 (I think) and set the timer for 20 minutes (I think). I always set the timer because I tend to get distracted by the boys. Suddenly I smell something burning. There is 5 minutes left on the oven timer but I yank the bread out. The bottoms of both communion loaves and all my buns are burnt. AAarrrRRGGggHHhH!!!! Now I am grumpy. The tops taste good, but they are totally unservable. So I didn't really get ahead, and I have no motivation to start again right now. Perhaps the birds would like a nice treat.

mmmmuffins

Yesterday Jacob wanted a muffin and there were none in the house. So today, while Daniel was napping,  we made some. I had a craving for these delicious cheese muffins my mom used to make, but every recipe in my three main cookbooks was bran-cheddar. They are probably good, but I don't have any bran cereal in my house. Then I found a recipe that didn't have bran, but it had yogurt. We don't eat yogurt. So what do I do? I invent. And this is what happened:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apple Cheddar Muffins

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup marble cheese, grated  

1/2 cup applesauce

2 small apples, not peeled, grated

1/4 cup margarine, melted

2 eggs, beaten

Directions:

COMBINE flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, and salt. Stir in cheese. Blend together apples, applesauce, butter and eggs in separate bowl.

ADD liquid to dry ingredients. Stir only until moistened. Spoon into 12 large greased muffin cups.

BAKE at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kitchen Math: When 2x2=3

So yesterday was Pizza Friday. Every friday in our house is Pizza Friday. It is everyone's favourite food. If you come over for dinner on a friday, we will feed you pizza.
Anyways... I needed to make dough. I brought up the recipe on the computer and proceeded to double it. Fairly simple math. Partway through I think... "Gee, I don't remember ever needing 1 tablespoon of salt for this recipe." I check my math. One-and-a-half teaspoons times two definitely makes three. And there are three teaspoons in a tablespoon.... wait a minute... "Why am I doubling this recipe?!?!" What you need to know is that the recipe as-is makes two thin crust pizzas. We only eat one so I freeze half the dough and then I only need to make pizza dough every other week. So here I am doubling a recipe that I've never doubled before, and now it will make four thin crust pizzas. Well, I wonder if dough is supposed to be in the freezer for a month, and what if over Christmas we don't have a pizza friday... will the dough get wasted? My solution - divide the dough into three pizzas. It will all hopefully get used this month and we will have slightly thicker crust. But then I had another idea! Instead of having thicker crust, I would roll the dough out into a larger circle and make stuffed crust. It was so yummy!
Math is fun. And delicious.